to get away from all the hearts and flowers everywhere you look, if you're not in a relationship and in no hurry to be ...

1. Go to your nearest bookshop and spend time browsing holiday books to help decide what country you're going to visit next.

2. Check out on Google the cheapest flights and accommodation in the places you fancy travelling to.

3. If you work from home - take a walk in the nearest park. No dog to take? Join BorrowThat Doggy and hook up with a local dog owner who needs the dog taken out occasionally while they're at work.

4. If you're at work, in your lunch break, find the nearest open space, wrap up until you look like a Yeti and walk around - look at the sky a lot. If it rains take shelter in a good café and order a hot chocolate with marshmallows.

5. Shopping therapy - go after work or take some time out. Buy something frivolous. No money? Go to Poundland gadget section (OK OK but I love it) or buy a notebook there to write hopes and dreams in. .

6. After work or later on go to a bar where the focus is NOT on Valentine couples - there are a few - order a cocktail and a bowl of fat chips with mayonnaise.

7. Write a letter to your future self (in 5 years time) telling him/her that you had these five goals for yourself and that you're glad that now they've come true. Picture yourself living that life with your goals come true.

8. Look up Meetup.com and join an activity at the weekend which involves doing something unusual, creative or active - you get together with a group of people for the activity. .. local walks, art classes, baking, quiz nights, writing groups, bird watching. You never know ,you might make a new like-minded friend.

9. Go to a movie in the evening (with or without a handy friend) - make sure it doesn't involve any romance. It's actually fun going on your own, you choose what you like - cartoon, action movie whatever, bring your own snacks. Or get your favourite takeaway and either watch a movie or 6 episodes of a box set on Netflix.

10. Think of what you could treat yourself to - a special girls night out with friends or (for guys) watching a football/rugby/ snooker match in the pub with your mates? Send friends an sms and see if you can fix it up for tonight or if not at the weekend.

Just remember - it's only one day and the whole of the media will switch to another event tomorrow.Out now on Kindle soon to be in print -Memoir Writing. How To Tell a Story From Your Lifeby Anna MerytGot a true story from your life to tell. Want to know how?Read this book.

You can buy it on Amazon. [25th Jan 2018 - Hold that thought - I've currently had to suspend print book sales due to problems with the cover. These are being fixed and will be back for sale on Amazon very shortly. - meanwhile it is still available on Kindle - KDP - CLICK HERE]

And here's a taster from the book:

Ten points to remember in the art of story telling

and narrative, in memoir writing.

1.A
good plot and well-defined characters, brought to life by dialogue.
Structuring a narrative is the most important thing you’ll do. There’s
the narrative thread, unfolding story, for the whole book. Then
chapter by chapter, building to climactic moments, creating dialogue and
developing characters.

2.Emotional
content Think about the emotional impact of what happened to you. You
really want the reader to ‘get’ that, to be involved from the start. The
emotional content for all the other characters involved comes next and how they
interact with you and each other.

3.Starting
point. Begin at a really interesting point in your story – a pivotal
moment.The story should grip the reader from the opening sentence.
Then work back, showing how the story got to that point..

4.Empathy with
the narrator/protagonist – in memoir, that’s you. This is vital to
keep up reader interest in carrying on reading so they really want to know what
happens to you.

5.Mood changes
– that’s not your mood, it’s the mood changes of the story. If
you have something dramatic happen, which carries on for a few chapters until
it’s resolved, maybe you need a chapter where everyone calms down, here and
there.

6.How to end a
chapter? Each chapter should end in such a way that the reader
HAS to turn to the next page to find out what happened next. The links
between chapters should flow smoothly.

When
I wrote my first memoir, my editor told me. ‘It’s like a series of anecdotes’.
So I went back and re-wrote beginnings and endings of chapters so it flowed
more smoothly.

7.Your story
is unique, whatever the genre. Build the reader's involvement slowly, take
them down a few tangents. Don’t reveal it all straightway, so it's not
clear where the story’s going. Keep some surprises for the end.
Build the reader's anticipation.

8.Setting is important, culture, country,
rural,urban. Your story will start/end in a specific
place. Think about the place and how the characters move around the
objects – it’s like writing a scene for a play.

9.Colour,
sound smell. Make your references to these unusual and un-clichéd.
Don’t for example refer to the sparkling turquoise sea, or the white
glare of the sun. Try and think of unusual ways to say these things.

10.Endings: If you set
up a puzzle or conundrum or mystery about what’s happening in your story,
keep teasing the reader about how it’s going to end. The story should move
towards some kind of resolution, some kind of satisfaction of the plot that
ties together the whole story. You can do this just as well with memoir as with
fiction.

I wrote a long poem called The Spriggan for Halloween and I'll be performing live as a witch with two other witches Rosie Canning and Lyndsay Bamfield - they'll be reading haunting tales ... woooo woooo! ... and other story tellers at

Here's an extract.... The Spriggan is a faerie/Green Man figure from Cornish folklore - who guards ancient sites and ruins...

The Parkland Walk is an old railway track that closed down in the 1950s when Mr Beecham decided that many small railway stations were no longer economic. There was a huge outcry but they closed anyway - stations that closed along The Parkland Walk were such as Crouch End and Muswell Hill. Many years later it was rescued from brambles and oblivion by a conservation/ permaculture group, who commissioned a statue of a 'spriggan' to be made by a sculptress. She built it into the side of one of the arches beside a short tunnel, made of brick.

About Me

I lived in Cape Town for a few years in the 70s and have published (Sept 2015 ), a memoir about that time called A Hippopotamus at the Table (available on Amazon UK) and at The Big Green Bookshop, N22 - Tel: +44 20 8881 6767 (free postage in UK). I also teach Memoir Writing and have published a book titled Memoir Writing. How to Tell A Story From Your Life, based on my experiences writing and teaching memoir writing.

I'm also a poet and member of Highgate Poets (www.highgatepoets.com) and have two poetry collections Dolly Mix and Heartbroke (review in Gold Dust Literary magazine).

In 2017, I was one of 3 editors for the 28th Highgate Poets Anthology (Naming the Clouds) produced for Highgate Poets and also organised a Poetry and Music evening to celebrate our Highgate Poets 40th birthday.

In 2011, I won First Prize in the Lupus International Poetry Competition for my poem 'Bulawayo' about my birth place.